Kathmandu, First Impression

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A page out of my "conventional" journal :-) ...

The aerial view of Kathmandu prepared me of what to expect; ideal mountain setting, pastures, brick houses and…more brick houses. The international airport reaffirmed my humble expectations. The slow and calm demeanors of immigration officials and the slackness of security told me that I had just landed in another developing country. Waiting at the airport exit were self-proclaimed porters, taxi drivers and all sorts of tourist-service hawkers. Half of them smelled of alcohol and shouted in most of their conversations, some demanded payments for simply stalking me and my trolley. They flocked like pigeons to dazed and disoriented arrivals as if they were bags of corns. They may have spent years at the airport but alien to the word jetlag.

The ride from the airport proved me wrong about my earlier claim; having lived in 3 other developing Asian countries, I thought I’ve seen it all. Rustic and teeming with people, Kathmandu resembles a huge village that happened to be situated in a place mandated as a city…and the capital at that.

Shanty houses are everywhere, beat-up vehicles in traffic jam, barefoot children running around, piles of garbage, cows, street vendors of all sorts and rows of run-down shops. The pollution, the noise, the heat and the lack of space, a hint of despair worn by Nepalese people on their facial expressions.

The lush mountains in the background seems out of place to the exhausted and crowded city in the foreground. There is indeed a fine line between paradise and hell. It is just a matter of looking up and down; to be stuck in the dusty street of Kathmandu in a medley of people, confusion, noise, and smell…and to look beyond the horizon to the beautiful mountains...in a matter of seconds you will know solace from adversity.

There is something very honest about the poverty in Kathmandu. Unlike the other third world cities I had been to, there are no pretensions and no shiny steel structures to conceal it. It seems that there is no escape, you see it, smell it and hear it as you pass by the life on the street.

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